


Professor Jason Todd

by starknjarvis



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: 20 years into the future, Fluff, Gen, No underage, OC college students, hot professors, not for lack of trying on the kids' part tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 08:09:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16888818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starknjarvis/pseuds/starknjarvis
Summary: Twenty years from now, Jason Todd teaches English as Gotham University. He is an excellent professor....But more importantly for most of his students, his Rate My Professor score has all the chili peppers.-Written for the Batfam Christmas Stocking exchange-





	Professor Jason Todd

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cursed_angelica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cursed_angelica/gifts).



> I wrote this as a Batfam Christmas Stocking for cursed-angelica! The prompt was "Jason Todd as an English prof like 20 years from now" for cursed_angelica.

Julie looks at her phone, and then bolts upright in her chair. “Shit, I have to go.”

Her study buddy, Lu, blinks at her. It’s mid-afternoon, a sleepy time on Gotham University’s miniature campus in the middle of the city. When Julie had been growing up, Gotham U had rented classroom space from skyscrapers scattered across the city, but an enormous donation from Wayne Enterprises a few years ago had finally given them the money for their own buildings—even a small patch of grass that qualified as a quad for city-dwellers. “I thought you didn’t have class until 5 on Tuesdays.”

“That’s on Wednesdays,” Julie says, chugging the dregs of her coffee and gathering her papers. “I have about ten minutes to get to my Shakespeare class. It’s over in Drake-Wayne Hall.”

Lu shrugsand leans back in her chair. “You can probably make it.”

“Only if I jog. Ugh, I can’t be late and have Professor Todd look at me with his disappointed face. Lu, his disappointed face has _killed_ innocent young girls before! It goes right into their hearts and they’re broken forever.”

“Oh, you have Professor Todd? I’ve heard he’s dreamy.”

Julie pauses in packing her bag, and then quickly ducks her head again. “I mean, he’s handsome, but he could be my dad.” Curse her Irish genes for betraying every embarrassing thought on her face.

Lu laughs so loudly it’s nearly a cackle. “I’ve heard he’s more daddy material.”

“Good _bye_ , Lu,” Julie says, fighting the blush she could feel scalding her cheeks.

She makes it across campus and through the classroom door just in time. Professor Todd gives her a welcoming smile as she slides into her seat near the back of the room, and then stands up to begin the lesson. The smile is enough to reignite the flush in Julie’s cheeks.

Does he have to be so _handsome_? Why did Lu have to remind her? She thought she’d figured out how not to blush in front of Professor Todd after the first month.

As always, he’s dressed in classic professor attire, like he picked up his basic aesthetic from watching _Dead Poets Society_. Except instead of looking like a young Robin Williams, Professor Todd is built like a linebacker had a baby with an underwear model. _Oh, but she did not need that mental image._

He has salt-and-pepper hair that has collected into an all-white section at the front that always falls artfully over his eyes. He’s clean-shaven today, which is a blessing—his stubble makes Julie stutter. Reading glasses with heavy black frames hide his eyes, which Julie knows from her time with him one-on-one during office hours are strikingly green.

Julie shakes her head and pulls out her pen, notebook, and her heavy book of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. She needs to focus. The last section they’d read of _The Taming of the Shrew_ had been confusing, and she wants to hear what he has to say about it.

That’s the worst part of her ridiculous crush. If Professor Todd were stupid, or an asshole, she could push the butterflies down. Instead, he’s _brilliant_ , and he can be so kind it hurts.

Last month, when Julie was devastated by a bad essay grade on top of a week of personal shit, she had cried in his office. Big, heaving sobs that she had tried desperately to contain, but it turned out that her Kryptonite was a kind man looking at her seriously and asking gently whether she was okay.

And after she’d cried all over him, he’d made her hot chocolate from the English Department’s terrible Keurig machine and then gone over her whole essay point-by-point so she could edit it and resubmit.

Not only that, but he’s clever. It’s easy to sound like a pretentious asshole when you’re teaching Shakespeare, but Professor Todd sees the humanity behind every character. He loves the language, but makes it accessible for them without making them feel dumb.

Once, he’d recited an entire love sonnet from memory, staring off in the distance like he was both looking at a person he was desperately in love with and in love with the words themselves. That day, Julie hadn’t been the only one blushing.

“We’re getting to the part in the play that gets really problematic,” Professor Todd was saying, flipping through his well-worn copy of _The Taming of the Shrew_. “In the beginning, with your modern sensibilities, you might have expected things to go a different way. You’ve all seen the old classic _Ten Things I Hate About You_ , right? If not, consider that your homework this weekend. But in our post-feminism love stories, when asshole men and fiery, independent women collide, it’s the men who change. Not so in this play. Shakespeare has a lot of interesting female characters—you’ll see some when we get to _The Merchant of Venice_ later this month, though that one brings in some fun anti-Semitism to make up for it—but this is rightfully one of his most critiqued plays. Does anyone have any reasons why?”

A boy near the front of the room, wearing nearly the same tweed jacket as Professor Todd, raises his hand. “Um, he literally beats her until she’s too scared to speak out,” he says. “That’s not really accepted these days.”

“That’s definitely one reason,” Professor Todd agreed with a bright, loud laugh. “You nailed that one, Josh. Anyone have any other critiques?”

That laugh. Is it really fair for someone smart, handsome, and kind to also be so _cool_?

Her classmate Ellen told her that she’d seen him come to school on a motorcycle once. Leather jacket included. Julie had to believe that one was a lie for her own sanity.

Angela, a senior in her sorority who had taken two classes with him, swears that he has a _tattoo_. “I asked him whether I could see it in person once,” she had said while they were out for drinks.

“You _what_?” Julie had squeaked.

Angela had shrugged. “Are you saying you wouldn’t hit that?” she had asked, but thankfully went on before Julie had to formulate a response. “I went in for his office hours and asked him for some _outside tutoring_. I was even wearing that one purple shirt that makes my boobs look amazing. You know the one.”

“I do,” Julie had said, still stunned into numbness.

“He let me down easy. He was so nice about it that I almost didn’t mind. Turns out I’d just joined the saddest fraternity on campus. I asked around and apparently at least five students a semester try to hit that, and he always turns them down. He has his own policy against dating students, even if they’re not in his courses. It’s a bummer, but also makes him hotter? It’s the worst.”

Julie doesn’t think she agrees. It’s sort of nice to be able to swoon over her professor and not have to worry he might be a creep about it. Her uncontrollable blushes aren’t going to land her in an awkward situation. She can just…bask in his amazingness and treasure her memories of him forever.

Once she stops dwelling, her blush finally recedes enough that she pipes up to answer a question near the end of class, and his approving smile makes her heart swell. Before his class, she’d thought she’d be terrible at Shakespeare. Now she’s wondering if her real problem with English classes had been her teachers, not herself. She _gets_ it, when he teaches it.

When class ends, Julie takes a minute to check her schedule on her phone so she can decide whether she has enough homework that she needs to head straight for the library or whether she can stop and grab a snack first. Professor Todd takes the ‘my classroom is your classroom’ approach, so she doesn’t think he’ll mind.

He’s still at the front of the room, packing his own bag, when the door opens. Julie jumps at the squeal and patter of tiny feet that zip past her. She looks up in time to see a small girl, maybe five, launch herself toward the front of the room and leap into Professor Todd’s arms. “Uncle Jay!” she exclaims.

She’s followed at a more sedate pace by another girl, this one probably close to thirteen, and… wow. Professor Todd is gorgeous in a rugged sort of way. This new man, though he’s close to the professor’s age and has the same dark hair, is _dazzling_. His hair, streaked with a few shy strands of gray, is full and lush. It looks like it would feel like silk. He’s watching Professor Todd and his—daughter?—with blue eyes that are bright with affection.

“Hey, Diana!” Professor Todd says, swinging the young girl around. He props her on his hip with casual ease and greets the other two. “Hey, Mari, Dick.”

 _Duh_. Julie had lived in Gotham too long not to recognize _Dick Grayson_. She’d ripped out photos of him from teen magazines and pasted them on her walls when she was in middle school.

“You ready?” Dick Grayson asks, stretching his arms above his head and bends his back in a way that no man over forty should be able to. “Bruce is already down setting up the beach house. The jet’s ready to go, but Damian said he’d take off without us if we’re late. You know how he is.”

Beach house? Private jet? Everyone knew Professor Todd was part of the Wayne family, but Julie usually forgot because his other qualities were so dazzling. It was like trying to remember that your cool, down-to-earth neighbor was secretly a Kardashian.

“Never should have let him get his pilot’s license,” Professor Todd agrees. “I’m ready. Class just wrapped up, and I printed out all the essays I need to grade over the weekend earlier.” He pats his leather satchel.

Dick Grayson laughs. “Maybe the sea breeze will make you go easy on the poor kids.”

Professor Todd’s grin is the sharpest one she’s ever seen from him, making her rethink her assumption that the motorcycle and tattoos were lies. “I’m only harsh with the ones who don’t give a shit.”

Julie wants to sneak on the private jet so she can listen to these gorgeous men joke with each other _all the time._ And, apparently, she needs to pack her shit and go before her awkward eavesdropping on their family moment gets creepy.

“I’ll see you on Monday, Julie,” Professor Todd says, waving at her when he notices her leaving. From his bright smile, he either didn’t mind or didn’t care that she had been lingering.

She waves back, and then runs out of the room. It takes until she’s at her usual seat in the library that her blush finally dies down.

When she opens her laptop, she pulls open the course catalog for the spring. She wonders if Professor Todd is teaching anything else she could take…

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact I learned while writing this: Rate My Professors took down their hotness rating scale this year, but I assume it will be back in twenty years.
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr](http://starknjarvis27.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> ghostjasontodd did fanart for this same prompt! If you want even more hot Professor Jason, click [here](http://ghostjasontodd.tumblr.com/post/181481488502/dr-jason-p-todd-professor-of-english-literature).


End file.
